The Maid Asks
The Grand Duchess asks.
Dorothy.
A maid who had served House Valencia for a long stretch of years.
Since childhood, she had lived and worked as the personal maid to Lady Rebecca, the only daughter of the Ducal House of Valencia.
Lady Rebecca, who was always prickly yet endlessly precious to her own people, and House Valencia, which was suspiciously sincere about the welfare of its servants, had made this the best job she could ever have asked for.
'As expected, our lady is the best.'
Perhaps that was why she was more loyal to her mistress Rebecca and to the Ducal House of Valencia than anyone else.
And yet.
"Milady Duchess—!!"
It seemed that today, for once, she would have to set aside that loyalty to her lady.
At first, she thought nothing of it.
"My lady? May I come in to clean?"
She had simply gone to her lady's room to clean, as she did every day according to her fixed routine.
Knock, knock—
"Lady Rebecca?"
But no matter how many times she knocked and called her lady's name, no answer came from within.
"Is she asleep?"
Knowing that her lady Rebecca sometimes enjoyed an afternoon nap, she assumed she must be sleeping and quietly cracked the door open.
And that decision, she would later judge, was the best one she had ever made in her life.
Because inside her lady's room, there was someone other than her lady herself.
'······Lord Albert?'
That someone was none other than her lady's fiancé, Lord Albert Zernias.
Dorothy already knew that the lord occasionally visited the ducal estate to see her lady, so even then, she thought nothing of it.
Not until her lady, cheeks faintly flushed, strode boldly toward him.
A scene that belonged in the romance novel she had read only yesterday.
'Kyaaaaaaak!'
Dorothy clamped both hands over her mouth and screamed inwardly.
'I knew the two of you were on good terms, but for my lady to be the one to work up the courage first!'
By now, the relationship between Rebecca and Albert was quite well known among the servants of the Ducal House of Valencia.
— Welcome, Lord Albert!
— Dorothy... was it? Good to see you.
Lord Albert had visited the Valencia Ducal Mansion often enough to know even the name of a mere maid like her.
And every time he came, he always spent time alone with her lady.
Even the most oblivious person alive couldn't possibly have failed to notice.
That unlike the typical political betrothal between nobles, the engagement between Lady Rebecca and Lord Albert was one born of love.
— ······Me? With him? You must be joking.
Of course, whenever Dorothy mischievously pried into the subject of the two of them, her lady would recoil in horror and deny it.
But everyone in the Ducal House of Valencia knew that was simply how her embarrassment showed itself.
The other servants, Dorothy included, and even the Duke and Duchess of Valencia themselves.
That was why Dorothy found the present moment so deeply moving.
'The lady who always denied it... is the one approaching Lord Albert first...'
If she had a talent for painting, she would have wanted to capture that moment on canvas and treasure it for the rest of her life.
Up to that point, she had been perfectly satisfied watching her lady's growth.
But her lady, wearing the expression of someone who had steeled her resolve, kept drawing closer and closer to Lord Albert.
'Surely not······.'
Dorothy hoped it wasn't so.
She believed that her shy lady was still incapable of an affection quite that bold.
But Dorothy's expectations were thoroughly shattered.
Mwah—
What Dorothy witnessed was the sight of Lady Rebecca, face burning scarlet, kissing Lord Albert.
'Kyaaaaaaaagh!'
What burst from her now was no longer a scream so much as something beyond it.
That was how shocking the scene had been.
Her lady, who had always hidden her feelings behind her blushes, openly declaring her heart like that.
She was so proud of her lady's growth, so moved by it—
That she failed to notice her lady staring at her with trembling eyes.
— Where... exactly... did you start watching...
Dorothy, flustered at the realization that she had become a maid who spied on her lady's display of affection, blurted out whatever came to mind.
— I... I didn't see anything! I did not see you kissing Lord Albert!!
And having blurted that out,
"I'm so sorry!!!"
She made the swift choice to flee the scene.
"Milady Duchess!! Where are you!!"
So that she could quickly report what she had seen to her mistress, the Duchess of Valencia.
Another maid who saw Dorothy sprinting about that day later testified that it was the first time she had ever realized Dorothy could run that fast.
***
Silence.
Could there be a colder silence than this?
Only moments ago, Rebecca's room had been filled with a strange, charged atmosphere.
Now an icy wind howled through it.
"···."
In stark contrast to the frosty air, Rebecca's face had turned redder than her own hair, as though she were on the verge of exploding.
She seemed to be hiding it desperately with her hands, but a face that red could hardly be concealed entirely behind Rebecca's two small palms.
'······Why is Dorothy, of all people...'
I, too, found myself looking at Rebecca, unable to find my voice.
Because I had never imagined for a moment that anyone would catch us in the act.
Dorothy, Rebecca's faithful maid, would never have flung the door open without so much as a knock.
Most likely, Rebecca and I had both been so absorbed in what we were doing that neither of us had heard her coming.
"······My lady?"
Even when I called out softly to check on her, all that came back was an endless silence.
And an awkward air to follow.
One wrong twitch of a finger, and I would have to answer for it.
Admittedly, if we were assigning blame, it was mine—I was the one who had spoken of a kiss on the cheek as a wish.
But holding my ground in this suffocating atmosphere was more than any human could bear.
"Lady Rebecca."
I decided to take a slightly firmer approach.
The moment I addressed her by name,
"······What do you want."
Rebecca finally lowered the hands that had been shielding her crimson face and looked at me.
Her face was still flushed, reminiscent of an apple just ripened,
but she seemed considerably better than before.
"Are you all right?"
"Does it look all right to you?"
Rebecca pointed at her own face as if asking whether I truly couldn't tell.
Watching her earnestly communicate that she was, in fact, not remotely all right, I felt sorry for her—and, at the same time, found her adorable.
"There's no need to be so embarrassed."
"How could anyone possibly not be embarrassed by this······."
The instant I told her not to be so ashamed, she shot back, demanding how she was supposed to feel otherwise.
Rebecca's expression looked truly aggrieved.
So for her sake, I kindly decided to explain why she needn't be embarrassed at all.
"As I said earlier, other engaged heirs and heiresses think nothing of this much."
"···."
"If anything, once word of this gets around, you and I will be the ones treated as odd—three whole years of engagement without doing so much as this."
I had no idea whether other engaged heirs and heiresses truly thought that way.
Having never properly set foot in high society, it was only natural that I didn't know what others our age were like.
But of this much I was certain.
Rebecca and I, engaged for three years while doing absolutely nothing but quarreling day after day—we were not the normal ones.
Supposedly, every betrothed couple in the Empire spent each meeting scheming how to gain the upper hand over the other.
'······Putting it that way, we really do sound insane.'
I decided not to dispute this sudden bout of self-reflection.
Even by my own assessment, I was not a person who could be called normal.
"······Even so."
Rebecca still looked unconvinced.
A hint of hesitation lingered in her expression; she seemed to still be embarrassed at having been caught by Dorothy.
"Then... were you pleased?"
"I beg your pardon?"
"I asked whether you were pleased when you kissed me."
"I... I must be out of my mind—how could I have been pleased in that situation?!"
The moment I asked whether she'd enjoyed it, her face flooded red again as she denied it.
She even shook her head vigorously, as if to say it was absolutely not the case.
Faced with Rebecca taking such a hard line of denial, I nodded.
"Then that's that."
"What exactly has been 'that's that' this whole time—"
"If it truly meant nothing to you, my lady, then it shouldn't matter that Dorothy saw, should it?"
"···."
Rebecca seemed to have been struck speechless.
No doubt she was thinking something like this:
'Does it? Then why am I embarrassed if it meant nothing? If it doesn't matter to me, then it shouldn't matter that Dorothy saw. No, wait. Even so, I showed something shameful as a Grand Duchess—of course it matters...'
After wrestling with the question for a long while, the Grand Duchess finally looked me straight in the eye and spoke.
"Then what about you."
"Yes?"
When I reacted as though I hadn't understood the question,
"······Were you pleased? When I... did that... to you."
Her gaze, which had been holding mine unwavering until this very moment—where had it gone?
Rebecca was speaking with her head turned slightly away.